14 ROYAL GARDENS 



from it. Whether he means a cuhivated garden, or a natural 

 self-sown collection of shrubs and flowers, cannot certainly be 

 decided. But he mentions as a part of what he could see the 

 word " alleys," which seems to imply some definite and arti- 

 ficially designed garden. Besides this written evidence of the 

 antiquity of some sort of garden here, there is also actual 

 witness to the same effect in discoveries made during various 

 alterations that have taken place. To mention only one 

 instance, recent constructional work has brought to light 

 several traces of old paths and other signs of a garden having 

 existed on the site of the present one for a very long time. 



Until the last twelve years or so, no very great interest 

 seems to have been taken in the garden. Some common 

 shrubs, most of them self or bird sown, a few trees, also pro- 

 bably planted by accident, and on one small portion of the 

 steep slope, some attempts at a stiff and, to present-day ideas, 

 ugly style of summer bedding-out, were about all that could 

 be seen. Now, on the contrary, it is no exaggeration to say 

 that there is here not only one of the most beautiful and inte- 

 resting little gardens in the whole of England, but it is culti- 

 vated with a minute attention to details, a breadth of idea as 

 to general effect, and an intense affection for every plant in it, 

 without which it could never have become the exquisite thing 

 it is. And, in addition to the unlimited care and skill dis- 

 played in its culture, it has been furnished, and lavishly fur- 

 nished, with every desirable flower, every precious shrub or 

 rare herb, every bulb or root of little known but often most 

 valuable variety and species, that could help to make it perfect, 

 and increase the pleasure its manifold beauties afford. 



Situated as it is in the moat around the ancient Keep of 

 Windsor Castle, no garden can more fitly be described as royal 

 than that at Norman Tower. It is considered an adjunct to 

 the Tower-house from which it gets its name, and owes its 

 exquisite finish, its artistic completeness and its wonderful 

 charm and beauty to General Sir Dighton M. Probyn, who 

 resides there. His great love of gardens has led him to 

 spare neither utmost care and thought, nor very considerable 



